Craft Rambles, Recipes, and Non-Sequiturs

Monthly Archives: June 2011

First off, I’d like to say that camping is a glorious thing. For better or worse, its one of the only times that I am away from technology for more than a few hours at a time. Worse because I don’t get a chance to edit my blog before things get posted, but so, so much better because I get to wander off into the wild in search of adventure and nature’s bounty.

I spent 11 days at the Valhalla Renaissance Faire in Camp Richardson, CA earlier this month. The Faire was only open on weekends, but participants were welcomed to stay throughout the week. I was originally planning only one weekend there, but my friend Kitty Sharkey kidnapped me and made me her assistant. Though she has been Guild Mistress of the Town Criers for several years, this year for the first time she also brought the barnyard from Havenscourt Homestead along. The 4 goats, 2 kids and 3 chickens that hung out in the Haven’s Court petting area are only a few of the Oakland farm’s many residents, but so far away from home, away from all the amenities, it was much harder to care for them and Kitty appreciated the help greatly.

In return for setting up her booth and for volunteering my time, I was able to stay all week among friends in the beautiful woods near South Lake Tahoe. I could not have asked for a better reward!

Trails behind the Faire site

We had a very wet start to the week and it even snowed one night. It was rough to work through the weather and when our tent collapsed, we thought we were really in trouble. Fortunately, there are so many wonderful people at the Faire that we had a borrowed tent set up in no time, managed to stay decently dry and made plenty of new friends by keeping people in firewood through the worst of the weather.

The real upside to all the late season rain was of course MUSHROOMS! Specifically Morels. I heard a rumor that someone had collected several pounds of them over the first weekend and decided to grab a friend so we could take a shot at it ourselves. My friend happened to come across the very fellow who’d had such luck a couple days earlier and got directions to prime hunting grounds. Off we went into the muddy chaparral and woods!

Now, I remember going mushroom foraging with my family as a child in Germany, but somehow I didn’t remember it taking so much patience. After a frustrating half hour or more (no one was keeping time except by vague approximations of the sun) my friend and I still hadn’t found anything but little brown mystery mushrooms that we weren’t willing to risk. Having almost given up we took a break from our search to drink, chat and catch our breath. I’d almost forgotten the search entirely when I suddenly spied something rusty brown beside a fallen tree, on the North side, where it was shady and damp. MUSHROOOOOOM! And then another and another! They were moist but crumbly and looked a little redder than I expected, but after spotting two more such groups we found one that looked just perfect, a showpiece!

Morchella Elata (Black Morel)

We brought back our booty to have it vetted by the fellow who’d done so well earlier that weekend and were told that all but that one beauty, the last one we picked up, were in fact False Morels. It wasn’t a difference I could have seen until it was pointed out to me, though once it was, it was quite obvious. False Morels are not as porous as True Morels and when sliced lengthwise they are solid instead of the characteristicly hollow stem and cap of theMorchella Elata (Black Morel) and its edible cousins(M. Esculata, M. Deliciosa, M. Conica). The red tone that I noted upon finding them was also an indicator of False Morels. Despite having found only the one edible mushroom, we were excited to have learned about mushrooming and I’m already looking forward to doing it again next spring.

Left: False Morel (NOT EDIBLE), Right: True Morel

*Please note that I am not an expert at mushroom foraging. Please refer to the links in the text along with the book Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora for more comprehensive information on mushroom identification and collection. Thank you.

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I am Pagan. Though I was raised a highly spiritual agnostic, I found that I always associated nature with some sort of ineffable power. Thus, I found Paganism.

I call myself a crafter, and realized recently that there isn’t a big difference in the way I practice the Pagan Craft and the way I craft my yarns. Each movement is intentional both in a ritual and in spinning.

From the seeming chaos in my fiber basket, I spin my wheel clockwise, bringing together a thread that shows every color which in turn show the twist of the yarn. And with intentional movement I have created something beautiful. Then, when I am done, I share the joy it has already brought me by selling or trading it to someone for something that will bring me joy and fulfillment in return.

Spinning also has an explicit place among Pagan myths as a metaphor for the course of life.

Among ancient Greeks, the three Moirae were the most powerful beings even among the gods; Klotho spun the thread onto her spindle and Lakhesis drafted the thread out into measures, one for each lifetime, then Atropos chose the manner in which each life ended, cutting the thread in just the right place. Neither man nor beast nor god could escape the length of thread that the Moirae spun for them. Though their task may seem a cold and morbid one, they were reassuring figures to the people of ancient Greece, proving that the gods themselves were not all-powerful.

The Three Fates by F.P. Thumann (1908 CE)

In Norse mythology the goddess Frigg, often interchangeably associated with Freyja, in addition to being the patron of love, fertility and beauty was the spinner of fate and patron of death. She is said to have had the gift of prophesy but did not tell what she knew in order to keep people from meddling. The constellation most commonly known today as Orion’s Belt was then referred to as Friggerock — Freyja’s Distaff or Freyja’s Spinning-wheel. She sat in the sky and watched over all things while spinning fate from the clouds on her jeweled spinning wheel.

Frigga Spinning the Clouds by J.C. Dollman (1909 CE)

Though I don’t tend to muse upon death as I spin my yarn, I do often think of the changes it undergoes. I wonder what the yarn will look like when it is complete and I wonder what my customers will create from it. Though I have finished my part in the process, the end of my personal project, the yarn moves on to change state and become a scarf or a hat or a pair of socks in the hands of another crafter. Though they may not know or acknowledge it, the yarn they buy from me is created with deep thought and mindful intention beyond just making yarn. As it is created it brings joy into my life and that joy is spun into the threads as surely as the fiber itself.

When you buy hand crafted goods try to remember that though you are paying more, you are getting a product whose creation brought happiness into someone’s life before it even came to you. That piece of art, that gem of craftsmanship, is something powerful and worth appreciating.